


The beginning of the end

by GamblingDementor



Category: West Side Story (1961)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Nightmares, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, everyone else suffers, no one else dies, the death from the warning is from canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-10-09 18:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10418871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GamblingDementor/pseuds/GamblingDementor
Summary: Set a few months after the story. Based on the Broadway musical. Anita still has night terrors.





	1. Chapter 1

Anita is waiting for him in her dreams every night as she did that actual evening.

 

All dolled up, of course − always her prettiest for him and the way his eye glinted viciously whenever he saw her in the tight black dress − but his gaze will never rest on her again. In the lazy languor of waiting for her gang leader of a boyfriend, all beautifully laid own on his bed like a reward for his bravery, the dream version of herself is as languid as she remembers being. The same knock at her door comes as the real one all these months ago yet the wound is as fresh as if the news had arrived minutes ago, the pain that overtook her body, all of her thoughts to never leave her again.

 

She opens the door with a bit of mood − Bernardo knows he's allowed in here without a knock, knows that she'll always kiss him if he's welcome or slap him if he's not − but in this, the dream differs from reality and instead of the tear drenched face of a frightened Chino after the rumble, she finds a sobbing Maria who swears she'll kill herself. When Anita leans down to hold her, kiss the tears away because the cards have been dealt now and the game of life must go on, Maria dissolves into nothing and Anita's hands are covered in blood. _It's your fault._ She breaks down and her sobs are mocked by that boy, that Tony, the murderer with the face of a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

 

Only then does Chino dare show his face, useless as he is. _Mataron a Nardo_ , he says over and over, as he did, the words struck forever into her. _Anita, they killed him._ Suddenly there are hands grabbing her body away and the rustle of fabric against her body and she wakes up in a cold sweat.

 

She's panting. The first days, she could not sleep at all because the dead haunted her. They still do, but her body did not keep up with the lack of sleep and betrayed her. The nightmares never stop, and so she doesn't expect them to and she pushes forward. She's still alive. Tears are wetting her cheeks and she rubs them clean. She turns around in her bed and looks out the window at the moonless night, hugging herself. _Nardo used to do that._ Her room was well guarded at bed time, of course. Her own mamá and papá back in Puerto Rico, Bernardo's took her in and the same rules went for her as for all the other girls. But come the dark of night, he would slip inside her room, between her sheets and her legs and after, he would always hold her until she threw him back out of her room in the early morning with a kiss and a promise of another night. Until she didn't.

 

"Anita?"

 

She wipes the last of her tears. They're hers only to see nowadays. She wears her grief in other ways, her head up high. Her face, if not happy because joy has left her world when that knife sunk into Bernardo, is at least put together when she turns to Consuelo at the door.

 

"¿Qué?"

 

"The nightmares again?"

 

She closes the distance, sits on the side of Anita's bed. Her hand reaches out hesitantly but she lets it drop on the sweat-drenched sheets again, giving up, or maybe offering Anita some privacy.

 

"They're just dreams," Anita replies at once, she always does. There's a pause during which Consuelo makes up her mind and covers Anita's hand with hers. Palm against palm. "Did I wake the others?"

 

A few of the girls also live here, with what used to be the Sharks. Back then, fresh off the boat from Puerto Rico, they settled together because they all just wanted to not be alone in the big and foreign America. Anita got used to it faster than any of them. There was a fleeting time when this new country seemed dreamily vast and the only thing its unknown promised was for her to explore it all. Back then, this house felt cramped, even New York. She thought she might get a place of her own where Bernardo could come visit if he was good. Gone forever, that hope, that feeling of freedom. Anita isn't sure she feels much American anymore. She's not sure she feels Puerto Rican either but she's still staying at the house with all the other girls.

 

"No," Consuelo replies. "It's just me."

 

Anita stirs, stretches herself all her length and drops Consuelo's hand. She makes herself comfortable, purposely avoiding the eyes she knows are on her. She knows what she'll find there. Pity, most likely. _La pobrecita, without her man she's lost it all. Who would have thought? She used to be so brave._

"Is it still about… you know…"

 

Anita wants to scream or to cry, anything, but she does no such thing, not anymore. She nods. Neither say anything, because there is nothing that words will achieve. There never will be. On a whim, she scoots back to the opposite side of the bed from where Consuelo is sitting and opens up the sheets.

 

"Stay?"

 

Consuelo slides under the covers with her, an arm firm around her waist and Anita buries her face in her neck. For the first time since she woke up, she feels like she can breathe.

 

"I got you, mamí," Consuelo says.

 

Her fingers are drawing the lightest patterns on Anita's back. _That too,_ she thinks, a cursed thought. _He did that too._ She doesn't dream again that night.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chino tries to cope with the loss of Bernardo as well.

 

Chino used to follow Nardo around like a shadow, a puppy. Some of the Shark boys liked to joke that Anita must be tired of being the girl of a taken man, the other woman to his assistant. She would laugh and tell them she had more to offer than ten Chinos, and Bernardo would agree and be even more exuberant in his affection. Still, the love he bore for his friend was real. For all he loved her, Bernardo also had a large circle of friends and Chino was at the top of it. He spoke highly of the boy. Anita thought Chino was like a brother to Nardo, the way they were together.

 

Now Chino is no one's assistant. He often comes back to the house even though he has no business here anymore. There is no war council plans, no serious big boy meetings. Anita sometimes asks herself if he's still hoping to marry Maria like Nardo wanted. If he holds onto that dream, then he is more stupid than she thought. The part inside Maria that was capable of love was washed away in that Polack's blood. They are never finding her again.

 

"Are you ever…" He asks her in Spanish on one of the many days he invites himself to dine with them − Bernardo's mamá never refuses him, the good soul. "Are you ever tired of mourning?"

 

It takes her a while to realize he is talking to her specifically but the girls around her are silent all of a sudden and Chino is staring at her with big eyes, like a calf begging the slaughterer to stop. Anita is well aware of everybody's eyes on her, those who have heard. _How dare he?_ She takes another spoonful of soup and a bite of bread, her eyes blankly staring somewhere behind him, because anyone who undermines the abyss Nardo has left behind is not even worth a glare. Chino looks down and leaves shortly after dinner.

 

It's not too long before he tries again. He traps her, the cabrón, on one of those nights she is at her sewing after opening hours at the shop. She likes her solitude, the diligence of work to keep her mind sharply focused on her fingers and nothing else. He dares to make small talk and won't leave even after her curt answers. He dressed up smart, she notices, in his best suit, his hat clutched between his hands nervously.

 

"Do you ever wish you weren't alone?"

 

She keeps sewing and pushes down the tears. No one is entitled to her grief.

 

"I just… I wanted to tell you, you don't have to be. To be alone. I…"

 

" _You never said any of this_ ," she replies coolly. "Because if you did… If you ever loved Bernardo a hundredth of how much I love him, you would be disgusted by your words, as I am. Go away and never talk to me again."

 

There is bile at the back of her throat and sadness deeper than she can express in her heart, and she watches him trot away like a pathetic dog beaten down. She waits until the steps are far and gone and the door closed and in an empty shop when the sun is down, now there is no one to hear the bitter tears she cries.

 

Consuelo doesn't even wait till the nightmares to find her that night.

 

"I could hear you grinding your teeth all the way from our room," she jokes as she slides under the covers with Anita. She's wearing perfume to bed, Anita notices. A vanity, but the smell of expensive flowers soothes her.

 

"I hate Chino," she whispers. "He came to the shop, tried to ask me out again. I hate him, I never want to see him again."

 

"You probably will," Consuelo says gently, a hand caressing Anita's back, wanting herself soothing but Anita's fury is too strong. "If not you, he'll try another one of us. He's… He feels alone."

 

"Solitude is in our cards now!" Anita retorts with bad mood. "He is insufferable to try and… to separate me from _him_ in his thoughts. Like I'm available."

 

_You_ are _separate from Bernardo_ , the voice inside her says. _He died and you're still here._ At least Consuelo has the grace to not mention the evidence. She knows to pay respect to Anita's grief.

 

"Does he think I'm just a doll passed down from a great leader to his second? A price that… that _Nardo_ lost and now that he's gone, he can just pick me up instead?"

 

"I think you're reading into this," Consuelo sighs, drawing Anita against her shoulder, arms circling her protectively.

 

"How can you say that?!" Anita groans into her neck.

 

"He probably thought you two were going through the same thing and he wanted to share your sadness. Sometimes, mourning brings people closer."

 

"I'm _meant_ to be alone now. The sun has set. No candle can replace it."

 

Consuelo hums her to silence, her melody vibrating through Anita's body in turn. Her fingers are delicate at her back and Anita hates that she almost forgets how different Bernardo's touch was.

 

"You're not as alone as you think you are."

 

"What's that supposed to mean?"

 

Consuelo kisses her forehead, brushing a curl that escaped from her braid behind her ear tenderly.

 

"Go to sleep, Anita."

 

 

Anita goes to sleep. The nightmares leave her be that night.


End file.
